Oddity Road @ The Rocking Chair

Soon to head out on a UK tour with fellow Sheffielders The Sherlocks, the journey ahead for Oddity Road could well be an interesting one.

The latest in a host of exciting acts emerging from the steel city’s ‘Sheafbeat’ scene (which I may have just invented), these lads were recently chosen as one of IndieCentralMusic’s picks for 2017, and gave us a short interview that you can read here.

Any notion that this Friday night at the basement stage of The Rocking Chair was merely a rehearsal for the times to come, however, was easily dispelled as soon as it became apparent just how much this date clearly meant to the band and sell-out crowd alike.

Oddity Road performing ‘Handshake’ @ The Rocking Chair (credit Eleanor Freeman)

With support coming in the form of Grigio and post-punk duo Raga, the intimate venue filled up quickly with the noticeably youthful following amassed by the main act in recent months.

Now, it’s awfully easy to embellish a gig’s atmosphere in a review such as this, and throw the ‘wild’ or ‘mad’ adjectives about in a kind of hyperbole word soup.

But even the most staunchly unconverted would have found it hard not be to be impressed by the scenes that ensued on this evening; this was a young band with only a few singles to their name whipping up the kind of frenzied, limb-throwing, shoulder-climbing free-for-all that is usually reserved for a groups with a profile much higher than theirs.

While, of course, one can’t determine the future of a band off the back of one gig, the way in which an entire room of people seemed to be able to belt out the lyrics to literally every song – not least ’Handshake’ and ‘You’, the two best received of them all – can only say good things for this troupe’s future, and undoubtedly gave them a night that will live long in the memory.

Oddity Road’s full list of upcoming tour dates can be found here.